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On last week’s article, I discussed how a community could develop an anthology to promote the businesses in their community. (Read it Here) Such a book would not only help develop community relationships but could be a tool for new comers to get a better idea of what the community, especially small communities or specific communities within larger cities.

Promoting A Local Anthology

1. Before book is put together, as part of the submission project, include within the cost of the submission the cost of one copy of the book.2. Include the ability to pre-order also at retail price, offer to sell them additional books for their family, or friends.3. Give the businesses the option of buying more books to sell or give away when their supplies have diminished.
4. Once the book is written, published and copies are purchased, here are ways that a community can optimize its use of an anthology book written. Sell copies from your chamber of commerce.5. Sell books at local and regional events where promoting the community would be beneficial.6. Have a free pdf offered online from your chamber of commerce website.7. Sell the book on Kindle and other online digital and print book sites.8. Encourage business owners to sell copies of the book from their businesses.9. Sell copies of books at the library bookstore, the local historical society bookstore, and at community events where people from outside the community may attend and purchase the book as a souvenir.10. Sell copies to regional and State agencies that promote tourism of your area.
I am certain that there are probably other ways to sell your local anthology that could unify the community and benefit local tourism and business.

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During the last several weeks, I shared articles about why you as a business owner should consider writing a book. If you’re a business person, and writing a book sounds like a good idea, but you don’t want to write a whole book because you either don’t have time or you don’t think you have can afford someone who can ghost write one for you, perhaps you could convince your community into creating an anthology in which you include an article about your own business.

A Unique Type of Anthology

A lot of anthologies have been written by professional writers. These anthologies might be a collection of short stories written by local authors or even a collection of stories of history. One very well-known anthology series is the Chicken Soup of the Soul series of books that have come out.
Small business communities could easily benefit from an anthology that promotes their community. I believe that communities could easily produce anthologies of stories and tip articles in the form of a book that they can sell to local citizens, home-comers, and to new comers interested in their local. These same anthologies could also be given away as a PDF on the local chamber of commerce site.
Imagine a book that mingles the elements of storytelling and tips into a book that contains numerous articles written by numerous business people who are willing to share some basic information about what they do. In addition to contact information, the local fire department chief could write about home fire safety and how to keep a small grease fire from becoming a full-blown house fire. A local police officer could share information about bicycle safety. The school principle could share what a newcomer needs to know about how to get a child into a new school. Local historians and high school students could tell stories about how the town started, stories about local sites, and interesting people of the town’s present and past. In addition, the plumber could write an article about what a person should check before calling a plumber. An electrician could write about the dangers of not calling an electrician. People from the local farmer’s market could write about the advantages of buying produce locally. In addition to telling about the children’s reading circle and the availability of Wi-Fi at the library, the local librarian can share information about the local readers’ club and local writers’ group.

The Benefits of a Community Generated Anthology

An anthology like the one suggested would bring community members closer. It would be a win-win-win for in the community. It could be a benefit to everyone in the local community from the chamber of commerce to the small business owner to the newcomer. All that needs to be done is to get each person to write (or have written for them) a chapter in the book, get it published and share it with those in the community via events, at the local businesses, or through the local chamber of commerce. It could be a pride of the community.

Explore Writing a Book to Promote Your Community

If businesses in your community would like to look into writing an anthology for your community, please contact me at cygnetbrown@gmail.com for a consultation.
Intrigued by the idea of writing a book to promote your business, but aren’t sure what exactly would be involved? Check out my book: Write a Book and Ignite Your Business

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Create the Business Owner Book and Publish It

In the first blog post this month, I explained why a business owner should write a book to promote his or her business. Check it out here. Last week I explained why I thought that a book created by that same business author should self-publish and use a print on demand business to print the printed copy of the book. If you haven’t read that one, read it here.

How to Market Your Business-Related Book

We ended our post last week with the business buying just one copy of the book. To market this book, I suggest start sharing it with your best customers at your brick and mortar location as well as your family and friends. If you were the business person who wrote the book, you could tell the customer that you need a certain number of books by a certain date (within a couple of weeks) that you want to order and ask if they want to get one of those books, autographed by you, of course. Ask them to pre-buy the book. If you don’t already have it, ask for their email address so that you can let them know when the book arrives. Wait no more than a couple weeks before sending in your order and let everyone who pre-bought your book when you send in the order. In addition to getting the books you sold to your family and customers, invest your profit back into more copies of your book for future sales. Once they have the autographed copy of your book, be sure to let them know how much you appreciate their business. By starting the process selling books to your family friends and current customers through pre-order, you might just be able to have the book pay for it’s own marketing.

Growing Your Local Reach

Now that you have your book out, its time to grow your book’s reach locally. One place you could go first would be to the local library and libraries in nearby towns. A lot of times, a library doesn’t want to take books that are from local authors because most local authors write fiction books. This business—related book would different because it is nonfiction and written by someone everyone in the area knows as someone in that business.
Next, if there’s a local bookstore, go visit them and see if you can set up a local book signing with them. Then go back to your family, friends and best customers and tell them that you will be signing books at the local bookstore. Ask them to help you invite people to visit you at the book store. Ask them to be your street team and start by sharing your information on social media.
Now go to, call, or email your local newspaper and let them know that you have a book out. Be sure that you have a press release to share with them about who you are and why you wrote the book. You can also do this with your local radio station and even your local television station. This publicity that you get locally should not only help get you free book publicity but will also help get you additional business from your main business.
While you’re getting your local publicity, you should also be building a following online. This means connecting with print and digital bookstores online. You can do this via YouTube videos (promoted via social media), developing a newsletter, having a website, having a blog, and writing online articles. You may have some of these already online. Others you might need to develop. You also might need help from someone within your business or even outside your business to help with many aspects building your online presence.
If they tell you they can’t afford a print copy, direct them to buy the book on Kindle. Let them know the value that they will get from having the book. Get your book distributed on all the major online bookstores.

Going Online

To build business beyond your local environment, you may want to distribute your books through trade shows both book trade shows and trade shows directly related to your business. In addition, you may want to advertise in trade journals.

Get Your Copy of Write a Book and Ignite Your Business Today!

There are many other marketing options that you may want to consider as you develop your book marketing as it relates to developing your business. For more information about the ways that your business can use to market your book to promote your business, please contact me at cygnetbrown@gmail.com for a consultation.
Intrigued by the idea of writing a book to promote your business, but aren’t sure what exactly would be involved? Read my book: Write a Book and Ignite Your Business

In this post I am going to explain why I believe that once the business owner has written the book, that book should be self-published, and then that book should be printed by a print-on-demand book publisher.

Why Self-Publish?

So What is self-publishing? To self-publish, does not mean that the author does all the work alone. It simply means that the author has complete control over the publishing and distribution process.

A business owner should self-publish his or her own book for several reasons. One reason is that unless the business book author is already famous, this author will have a difficult time getting big publishing companies to take on their publishing project.
Another reason expert business authors should self-publish is because when the author sells out to a big publisher, that author often sells all rights to that publisher. When an author self-publishes however, that author keeps all rights to the book. If the author wants to sell copies of the book in his book and mortar, the author can. If the author wants to sell digital books, the author doesn’t need to ask permission to sell his or her own book on Amazon. If the author wants to create YouTube videos based on information found in the book, he can do it without violating a contract with the publisher because the author IS THE PUBLISHER. A final reason to self-publish is that the publishing process can take just a couple of months of hard work rather than spent waiting up to two years for the publishing company to get around to publishing your book.

Why Use a Print on Demand Service?

I believe a business owner who writes a book to promote his or her business should also consider using print-on-demand for the printing of his or her business book. The reason is this. No one wants to have boxes of books in their basement or garage that they can’t give away!
A print on demand printer offers the ability to get thousands or just book printed. Therefore, you can buy just enough books to sell during a specific period so that you don’t have to store thousands of books.
Here’s what I suggest. Get just one copy of the book and put it on display at your business and show all your customers. At this point you will start marketing your physical book. More about how to market your book in my next post.
For more information about how to self-publish and where you can have your book self-published as a self-publisher, contact me at cygnetbrown@gmail.com. Not only can I help you with this information, but I can help you format your book for print and digital format, show you where to get a cover made, and get your book printed via print-on-demand.

Learn More About Using a Book to Promote Your Business

Don’t Yet Have a Book to Publish? Have a book to Publish, but need more details on how to publish and how to market that book? Check out my book: Write a Book and Ignite Your Business.

Intrigued by the idea of writing a book to promote your business, but aren’t sure what exactly would be involved? Read my book: Write a Book and Ignite Your Business

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This month we are going to discuss why you should write a book if you own a business. So why should you write a book? That is the question we are going to address today.

Become Your Industry’s Expert

First reason that you should write a book to promote your business is because you have expertise that the world needs to know about. If you have been in business for any length of time, you have expert advice that you can share with others about well, just being in business. You also have expert knowledge in the service or product your business provides as well. If you’re a farmer, you have knowledge of the type of crops or animals that you raise. If you’re a plumber, you have expertise in plumbing. Are you an electrician? Are you a real estate agent? Are you an accountant? Are you a public speaker? Are you a teacher? Are you a doctor? If you do any of these things (or are good at doing anything related to your business!), you have expertise that can benefit potential customers with knowledge about specific subjects that relate to your business.

In my book: Write a Book and Ignite Your Business, I show how you can share your expertise to your customers that will benefit you and the customer in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to share with them.

Promote Your Expertise While Encouraging DIY

You may ask “How, if I sell my business secrets, how will I make money with my clients? Won’t they just do it themselves?”

Sure, they might, but the truth is, they probably won’t. There might be a few things that they would do themselves. For instance, if your client bought your book about plumbing, they might be able to do a few things themselves like unclogging a drain or changing out a water strainer on the faucet, but when it comes to the difficult jobs like plumbing the whole house, your clients will be less likely to go to your competition because you wrote the book on the subject and since they have read your book, they know you much better than they do your competitor! When you have a book out about your business, you elevate your own self-worth as an expert above your competition.

In your book, make sure that you explain to any potential DIY customers when seeking expert advice is imperative. Show them what they can do on their own to save money and describe when it is necessary to get a professional. For instance, when someone is building a house, the DIY person might purchase the necessary materials (based on a chart in your book), help with the electrical work by drill the holes in the studs, running wires through the wall and then having you, if you’re the electrician, finish the wiring process and setting up the electrical inspection with the proper authorities.

Extend your Sphere of Influence Beyond the Local Economy

By writing a book about your business expertise, in addition to blowing away the local competition, you extend your expert advice beyond your normal sphere of influence. You can only be in one place at a time, but your book can spread your knowledge beyond your community. You bring income from other parts of the country into your town.
A book can create an income when you normally wouldn’t have one. I know that many people in the building profession have slow times during the winter months. If during that slow time you write a book and work at marketing that book, you can develop a following and an income during that time in the year.
A lot of self-help books are purchased during economic downtimes. In addition, many new businesses are started during these times as well. If your professional business takes a hit during these down times, marketing your book when your professional business isn’t doing as well can help you get through that economic slump. You could even license your book out to competitors outside of your own local business area and make even more! (contact me and I will explain how this works!)